In the spring of 2025, China’s food delivery market has witnessed what can only be described as an epic commercial showdown. JD Takeout has launched a blitzkrieg offensive into Meituan’s core territory, with the two sides engaging in a full-scale confrontation across four battlegrounds: subsidies, fulfillment efficiency, merchant acquisition, and technology penetration. As the “takeout war” between JD and Meituan rages, what exactly is at stake? What are the implications? Could this battle shake Meituan’s ten-year dominance in the industry?
Starting April 21, 2025, the competition between JD Takeout and Meituan has entered a white-hot phase. On April 21, JD Takeout launched its “Super Member Day” campaign, announcing that all PLUS members would enjoy “zero delivery fee + 30% discount coupons” as exclusive benefits. It also collaborated with brands like Mengniu and Jinlongyu to launch a “brand livestream takeout express” service, promising 10-minute delivery on livestream orders. In response, Meituan launched a “Citywide Carnival” the next day, utilizing dynamic subsidy algorithms to issue “20 yuan off on 20 yuan spend” inflated red packets in high-order-density areas. On April 23, JD Takeout launched its “in-store rider” program across 15 new first-tier cities, dispatching dedicated couriers to merchants in core business districts to ensure that top-selling items are delivered within 18 minutes of being prepared. Meituan retaliated within 24 hours by deploying 5,000 fourth-generation drones nationwide, covering 3,000 communities to establish a “12-minute guaranteed arrival” aerial corridor. These five days of close-quarters combat ignited the ultimate showdown of “technology + capital + ecosystem” in one.
I. JD Takeout: A Carefully Planned Surprise Attack
On April 1, JD Takeout simultaneously launched the “100 Billion Spring Renewal Plan” across 30 core cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Users logging into the app received a new-user gift package worth 88 yuan (~USD 12), with a 20 yuan (~USD 2.75) discount on their first order regardless of product type. Coupled with the promise of “30-minute delivery or it’s free,” daily orders surged by 300%. The next day, Meituan urgently launched its “Spring Thunder Counterattack” campaign, raising member red packet quotas by 50%, introducing “late delivery compensation” insurance, and starting a “1-cent afternoon tea” blitz in key business districts. Over the following three weeks, the subsidy intensity from both parties escalated in a spiral: JD Takeout introduced a standing “30 yuan off 30 yuan spend” discount, while Meituan implemented “daily miracle coupons” for dynamic price matching. JD lowered its free-delivery threshold to 15 yuan (~USD 2.10), and Meituan followed up with a limited-time “0 delivery fee” policy. At the peak, the per-order subsidy rate reached 40%, setting a historical high for the industry.
Yet this battle is far from a mere subsidy war. Leveraging JD Group’s supply chain advantage, JD Takeout launched its “Express Supermarket Delivery” channel on April 8, promising 30-minute delivery for fresh produce and daily essentials — a direct threat to Meituan’s Flash Purchase business. On April 15, Meituan integrated the inventory systems of one million merchants on Dazhong Dianping and launched a “dine-in combo delivery” service, compressing the delivery time for restaurant sets to 25 minutes. By late April, the battleground extended to the rider segment: JD poached Meituan’s gig riders with “guaranteed income + full social insurance,” while Meituan countered with “double order incentives + rank-based privileges.” This multidimensional war has rewritten the rules of competition in the food delivery sector.
II. The Attack and Defense Logic of the Old and New Kings
JD Takeout’s “Precision Penetration Strike” Strategy
As a market challenger, JD Takeout has adopted a highly targeted “scalpel-style” breakthrough approach. On the user side, it uses big data to identify Meituan’s high-value users (those spending over 800 yuan/month or ~USD 110) and sends them “exclusive win-back coupons.” This is integrated with the JD PLUS membership system to precisely convert e-commerce users into local lifestyle customers. On the merchant side, JD rolled out a “three-free policy”—three months of zero commission, free integration into JD’s supply chain, and free use of smart ordering systems. This succeeded in winning over key Meituan merchants such as Tai Er Sauerkraut Fish and Manner Coffee.
More crucially, JD’s fulfillment system delivers a “dimensionality-reduction strike”: with 1,500 smart warehouses nationwide and a 1.3 million-strong rider network from Dada Express, JD’s pilot “Lightning Warehouse” in Yizhuang, Beijing has achieved a delivery miracle of “9-minute arrival within a 3 km radius.” Data shows the spoilage rate of fresh products in this area was controlled under 0.3%, and order fulfillment costs were 28% lower than traditional food delivery models. These infrastructure investments allow JD to reduce fulfillment costs by 15% compared to Meituan, enabling it to sustain aggressive pricing wars.
Meituan’s “Ecosystem Defense War” Response System
In response to the surprise assault, Meituan demonstrated its strategic depth as an industry leader. It promptly activated a “three-ring defense mechanism”: core users saw their membership program upgraded to a “Lifestyle Pass,” connecting food delivery, ride-hailing, grocery, and more into a unified points system; mid-tier users were retained through “Group Meals” and viral sharing; marginal users were managed via a smart subsidy system that dynamically adjusted customer acquisition costs.
On the merchant operations side, Meituan unlocked its dormant B2B data assets, offering an “intelligent pricing system” to 200,000 merchants. This system dynamically adjusted discount campaign ROI, allowing merchants to raise their average order value by 15% without increasing their discount margins. In building its technological moat, Meituan expanded drone delivery to 100 cities, forming the world’s first low-altitude logistics network. It also deployed an AI dispatch system to optimize routing for millions of riders, maintaining a 98.5% on-time fulfillment rate — a benchmark for the industry even during order surges.
This offensive and defensive battle represents a clash of two business philosophies: JD seeks to redefine local lifestyle service standards with its retail DNA, relying heavily on “centralized supply chains + extreme timeliness” and a self-operated approach. In contrast, Meituan sticks to a platform-based ecosystem strategy, using connectivity density and network effects to build competitive barriers. As JD shocks the market with supply chain certainty, Meituan counters with a flexible, collaborative network. The April collision of these two models has produced dazzling commercial sparks.
III. The Battle’s Lessons: A Paradigm Shift in Local Lifestyle Services
Currently, JD processes just 5 million daily food delivery orders, still far behind Meituan’s 70 million+. Some observers believe that unless there’s a major market shakeup, the structural positioning of the two players is unlikely to change. For JD, which is deeply rooted in traditional e-commerce, scaling up delivery capacity and attracting merchants are key survival factors amid the brutal melee of instant retail.
As the war intensifies, the food delivery industry is undergoing three major structural changes:
First, subsidy warfare is shifting from “brute force” to “intelligent precision.” Meituan’s LBS-based elastic subsidy system and JD’s user lifetime value model mark the beginning of an algorithm-driven price war era.
Second, fulfillment capability has become the core competitive metric. With autonomous delivery vehicles and drones, top players have entered the “25-minute delivery age.”
Third, platform competition has been elevated to the supply chain level. JD’s standardization of front-end warehouse goods and Meituan’s digital transformation of merchants have jointly raised the industry’s entry threshold.
However, this battle has also revealed industry concerns. With both sides losing up to 5 yuan (~USD 0.69) per order, capital markets are questioning the sustainability of “burning money for growth.” Small merchants are being forced to “pick a side,” losing operational autonomy. Rider ecosystems have been fractured by poaching wars, exposing structural flaws in the crowdsourced model. These tensions signal that the next stage of competition will go beyond commerce, involving platform governance and a reevaluation of social value.
Interestingly, as the two giants clash, Douyin Life Services has quietly launched a “pickup in-store” feature, while Alipay and Ele.me jointly introduced a “buy now, deliver now” credit delivery service. The April war may be just the prologue. With retail, content, and payment platforms flooding into this track, the local lifestyle service market is transforming into a coliseum for super-ecosystems. The JD-Meituan war reveals a brutal truth: in the age of intelligent digitization, there is no eternal moat — only evolving survivors. The key to victory may lie in who can shift the battlefield from traffic acquisition to value creation faster, from commercial competition to ecological symbiosis. This “takeout war” is not simply a battle for market share but a microcosm of the industry’s shift from “traffic dividends” to “system capabilities.” JD enters as an “elevation challenger,” while Meituan counters as a “dimensional reduction defender.” Regardless of the outcome, China’s internet competition logic has shifted from “barbaric growth” to “ecological fusion.” As Liu Qiangdong aptly put it: “We’re not here to fight over the cake — we’re here to rebuild the table.” Whether that table can support a trillion-yuan future depends on whether these giants can truly balance commercial interest with social value.
[Disclaimer]: The above content reflects analysis of publicly available information, expert insights, and BCC research. It does not constitute investment advice. BCC is not responsible for any losses resulting from reliance on the views expressed herein. Investors should exercise caution.